Spent a while trying to track down a rattling noise on this 1937 Conn 10M overhaul I just completed and finally figured out it was the window in front of me! These are such fantastic horns. A shot of the keys and pad seats during the overhaul. I’ve started doing a bit more disassembly after …
This horn came to me after having lived as a wall decoration for several decades. It was completely rusted and seized up in a way that I have only seen in other saxes that were exposed to the weather or submerged at one point. The kicker was it had original pads in it, so it …
It has been a hell of a year. Stayed really busy, and remembered to take a few photos of some of the stuff that came across my bench. I saw an unusual number of early Mark VIs, Conn 30Ms, Conn 26Ms, and original pads horns of all types, and several horns I had never had …
I had a rough patch in my personal life last year (doing better now) and had not put a post here in a while. Here are a few random selections from what has been on my bench in the past few months. Click to enlarge. …
This was a beast of an overhaul. This beautiful gold-plated saxophone originally had the Martin “Neverleek” pad system, which was a gimbaled pad that consisted of a very large dome hard-soldered in the key cup, with a very thin metal-backed pad that was lightly screwed into the dome to allow it to gimbal around to …
This was a very clean Buffet SDA tenor that sported what some folks call “sparkle lacquer”, although for me the jury is still out on whether that is a real thing or not. (It looks like crazing close up, and I’ve been told by folks who bought theirs new that it developed over a few …
Fairly standard overhaul done on this beauty. I used flat metal resonators. These like thin pads- you’ll be using minimal adhesive as well to get them as thin as the horn wants (assuming key geometry hasn’t been bent all around in the past to accommodate thicker pads). Cool horn. I like the woody tone of …
Solid sterling silver Selmer Series III alto, full mechanical overhaul. This one was a doozy! While it arrived playing decently, it just played dead and stuffy all around, with no clear culprit. In fact, the owner (an extremely accomplished classical player) had been chasing this problem for a couple years, and was growing frustrated that …